


Arthur's Not in Love.  You're in Love.

by deinvati



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fic Exchange, M/M, Meet-Cute, Serendipity - Freeform, Stupid Cupid 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9706862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deinvati/pseuds/deinvati
Summary: Arthur has a way of pushing even fate into doing what he wants.  His favorite New York moment?  This one's climbing the charts.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entrecomillas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entrecomillas/gifts).



> For [entrecomillas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/entrecomillas/pseuds/entrecomillas) as her Stupid Cupid gift, who has made me beautiful art and who I hope enjoys this half as much as I enjoyed hers.  
> Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> Prompt: serendipity
> 
> Thanks to [NonnieMouse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmANonnieMouse/pseuds/IAmANonnieMouse) for working her fingers to the bone beta-ing for me! She is magic.

The job is in New York, and it's nice to be home, even if it's not possible to go see anyone he knows. There are eight million people in New York and the chance of seeing a familiar face on accident is slim, but Arthur has a way of pushing even fate into doing what he wants.

Dom Cobb calls him a "point man," but Arthur prefers to think of himself as an Obtainer. He gets what you need so you can do what you do. He isn't fancy or flashy, but fuck you if you think you can do it better. Arthur is the _best_. Jobs come in on time and under budget, and the possibility of success is always there. He can see every nuance of a job, each possible twist or turn laid out like a tree in his head. Arthur takes the main trunk of the operation and spins each outcome into branching possibilities. He plans for everything. He doesn't get distracted.

Arthur doesn't fuck up. You fuck up.

And at the end of the job, he snaps the silver briefcase shut, gathers up Dom, and either gets paid or doesn't get paid, depending on other people's fuck ups.

  


  


This job seems fairly straightforward, except that Dom has a "vision" for how it is supposed to go, and it's making Arthur nervous.

"Explain to me again why we need to use the mistress," Arthur says with precision, notebook in hand to write down the epiphany Dom is going to reveal.

"She's the key to this whole thing!" Dom explodes, gesticulating wildly with a marker. "It's about the _emotion_ that's attached to this. She's the positive point in his life!"

"Are you sure about that? His extraneous spending specifically on her has decreased in the last two months."

"How do you know that?" Dom demands.

Arthur raises an eyebrow at him.

"Nevermind," he says, turning back to the board where he's listed pros for using the mistress as an extraction tool.

"It's just that there's such a positive vibe around him when he's with her!" Dom insists, writing "positive vibe" on the list. "He trusts her!"

He writes TRUST! on the board.

"I'm telling you, if you put the wife and the mistress in a room next to each other, he's going to tell his secrets to the mistress."

"I don't think that's what would happen if you put them in a room together," Arthur points out.

Dom flaps his hand at that, and Arthur sighs and turns to another page. "Alright Dom, I'm going to need some specificity. How are you going to get him to locate the mistress so he can tell her his secrets? And after, how do we find out what he's told her?" Arthur tips his chair back, balancing on the back legs. "Bugging equipment? Hidden cameras?" he asks, already jotting a list.

Dom rubs his chin. "No, I have a better idea. I have a vision, Arthur. This extraction is going to be…elegant."

Arthur doesn't roll his eyes. You roll your eyes.

  


  


Arthur is trailing the mark and waiting for the subway when he feels someone staring at him. He switches his phone to his other hand, tucks his papers under his arm, and subtly unbuttons his jacket. If he needs to move, he needs to be able to move quickly. The turnstiles clang behind him and Arthur uses the noise as excuse to look around. At the other end of the platform, a man in a goldenrod shirt is watching him.

 _Holy shit,_ is the only fully-formed thought he can muster. The man is…

_Gorgeous. He's fucking gorgeous._

Arthur, who can see every possibility and has correctly predicted the mark's last three stops, including this impulse one for coffee, is standing stock-still and staring without another thought in his head.

The man smiles a cocky grin, full of crooked teeth that should be a turnoff but _definitely_ aren't. Arthur can't move. He's always had a weakness for muscles, and shit, are those tattoos at the edges of his shirt sleeves? He manages to clamp his jaw shut and swallow, hard, when the man raises an eyebrow at him.

Then, Arthur drops everything he's carrying in a flurry of paper and hiss of subway cars.

"Fuck," he mutters as he scrambles to pick up the pages and make sure his phone isn't cracked. By the time he looks up again, the mark is gone, lost in the wave of passengers boarding the newly-arrived car. "Fuck," he says again.

Reflexively he turns back to look for the man in the hideous yellow shirt, and spots him just as he is swallowed up by the closing doors. Arthur has one knee on the floor of the subway terminal, shoving papers haphazardly into a pile, and he watches the train doors close, preparing to carry the beautiful stranger away from him. Just before the train begins to move, the man turns and meets Arthur's eyes once more. He grins, and this time, Arthur smiles back wryly and salutes with the papers in his hand. The man holds his gaze until he's out of sight.

Arthur lets out a shaky breath in the sudden silence. "Fuck," he whispers, hanging his head.

Arthur doesn't feel like he'd been hit by a truck. You feel like you've been hit by a truck.

  


  


He spends the rest of the week trying to recreate that moment and catch a glimpse of the man again. He's at the same station the next day at the same time, but the hideous-shirted stranger is nowhere to be found. He waits for two trains before giving up and getting on the next one, hurrying to catch up to the mark. But Arthur isn't deterred. He will find this man and, at the very least, get his name. It's silly really; he caught the briefest glance of a stranger, and now he is obsessed.

His logical brain works to spiral out all possible outcomes, and he finally has to shut it up with alcohol when the What Ifs outnumber the Probables.

And yet-

 _What if he's straight?_ _What if he doesn't speak English? What if he doesn't believe in evolution?_

_Oh god, what if he voted for Trump?_

Arthur shudders and takes another drink.

At work, Arthur pulls down information about the mark, his wife, his mistress, and his son-aka their client-but there isn't much else for him to do until Cobb settles on the foundations of their plan.

He also bookmarks the departure times for each major airline and repacks his suitcase every morning, because he has no faith Cobb can pull off "elegant."

The next day he stands at the station, searching for the stranger. _Eight million people,_ his brain taunts as he dials his phone.

"Yeah, Carlos," he says, voice clipped, "I need a favor. I heard you'd worked with that forger on your last job. How did it go?"

Arthur half-listens, humming in the right places. Carlos's words don't matter as much as his tone of voice, which answers the main question he's had about using the forger. Carlos likes Eames, which is about as good as you can do for a reference in this industry.

The gorgeous man never appears, and Arthur is bored to tears waiting for the mark to do something besides work. He heads back to the warehouse and pitches his new idea to Cobb.

"A forger!" Cobb gushes, his eyes already dewey with the possibilities. "That's perfect, we'll use them to forge the mistress and then we won't have to worry about all those little details you keep nagging me about."

Arthur lets that one slide.

"When can they start? And how long will it take them to get the forge ready?" Dom asks, bouncing on his toes.

Arthur blinks and admits, "I haven't called yet, I thought I'd run it by you first."

"Good, good, let's do it, yeah?"

"Yeah," Arthur clears his throat and grabs the burner phone he had for the job. It is a little scuffed from his graceful moment in the subway, but he dials the number and turns on the speaker phone so Dom can hear.

A male voice with a cheery British accent fills the room, which surprises Arthur. He'd assumed Eames was a woman. Carlos had said they'd needed a woman to distract the mark in the dreamspace and Eames had pulled it off.

"Cheers, you've reached Eames, reproducer and rapscallion, purveyor of beautiful things both art and living, and all-round dashing cad. Not available at the moment, but if you'll leave a message, I'll ring you back. Ta!"

Arthur isn't intrigued. You're intrigued.

  


  


They talk on the phone quite a few times, always while Arthur is off "trailing the mark" and unsuccessfully looking for the exquisite, built man in the ugly shirt. Eames asks for a week to prep and only a slightly outrageous amount of money in exchange. Arthur haggles, because of course he does, and Eames just laughs, a rich, throaty chuckle that makes Arthur swallow and look at his phone. Obviously, he needs to get laid. His dick is controlling far too much of his response rate at the moment and he has no idea what has come over him.

Arthur scowls into the phone. "Very well, Mr. Eames, but at that price you have five days, otherwise you'll take my offer and that will be that."

Eames, the annoying bastard, just laughs again. "Of course, darling," he tells him, "that's what I meant. One business week. Starting Wednesday."

Fucker.

Arthur isn't grudgingly impressed. You are.

  


  


On Wednesday, Arthur wears his no-shit suit and his freshly polished Balenciaga's. He is going to slaughter this meeting with Eames and then he is going to check the final station on the route and finally meet the mysterious man he's been wondering about for a week. Because he isn't imagining things. He'd felt something the moment he'd seen the man's face. A zing along all his limbs that wasn't lust, or even something as dopey as love at first sight. It felt like… destiny. Sure the guy is good looking- _great looking_ his brain corrects-but if that is Arthur's holdup, why do the majority of his daydreams involve wondering what his favorite movie is, or where he likes to go eat in New York? Maybe someplace small, where they can sit in a corner booth and steal bites from each other's plates, laughing and exchanging stories-

Arthur shakes his head and walks into the warehouse. The space is currently filled with a well-built man wrapped in a salmon colored shirt and olive-green dress pants. And is that a wallet chain? Is it actually connected to a wallet? Do people actually-

And then Arthur's thought process skids offline because the man turns around and it's _him_. Here. In this shitty warehouse in the middle of Queens, with a week left on this job and-

"What are you doing here?" Arthur blurts, keeping a tight grip on everything he is carrying. What the _fuck_? How did he get here? _Was he looking for me too?_ A small warm ball forms in his stomach at that thought, even though it should be concerning he is so traceable.

Surprise is etched on every line of the man's handsome face. "Arthur," he purrs, just like he had on the phone every time he'd called, and Arthur feels the two spheres of his world collide. "Lovely to finally meet you, darling."

"Oh," Arthur breathes. "You're British." There is too much, he has too much to process, there are too many possibilities.

Eames's eyebrows hit his hairline and he smirks. "Yes? Was that not already established?"

Arthur feels an odd relief rush him with the merging of these two abstract men in his head. "So you didn't vote for Trump," he babbles, the connections and the _rightness_ as things click into place in his head.

Eames makes a face somewhere between horrified and amused. "No, indeed. Nor would I. Are we jumping right into politics in the workplace already?" he says, laughter hidden behind his words. "And I'd heard such professional and terrifying things about you, Arthur. What's next? Religion?"

Arthur gives a weak chuckle, feeling the need to sit down. He puts his things on the table closest to him. "How do you feel about evolution?" he asks, only half joking.

Eames looks bewildered. "What is there to feel about it?"

Arthur puts his hands on his hips and breaths a sigh of relief to the ceiling. "Favorite movie?"

Eames crosses his arms and leans a hip into the table next to him. "Cool Hand Luke. And I must say, this is the oddest job interview I've ever had."

A smile blooms from somewhere deep in Arthur's chest. He stares at the tips of his shoes and grins like an idiot. "Favorite place to eat in New York?"

He chances a glance at Eames, who looks a little dazed but smiles back. "It's a little place, but it has great frozen hot chocolate. It's called Serendipity."

Arthur's not in love. You're in love.


End file.
